We have too many Christians wanting God and the secular non-Christian way of thinking,

and they want to join venture.

But Dr. Tony Evans warns you can't have it both ways.

Heaven is not going to help you if you want the world to help you too.

This is the alternative with Dr. Tony Evans, author, speaker,

senior pastor of Oakcliffe Bible Fellowship in Dallas, Texas, and president of the Urban Alternative.

One of the first things a teacher tells students is pay attention. There's going to be a test.

Well, Dr. Evans says the same is true in this spiritual classroom we call life.

Let's join him now in the first chapter of the book of James, as James tells us what it takes to make

the grade. His first subject is about trials in the first 12 verses.

Now, you're either in a trial, you just came out of a trial, or you had it to a trial,

or you in all three.

Jesus made it clear in John 1633, in this world you will have trouble.

Many of you receiving your mailbox, sometimes an envelope that simply says occupant,

translation, we don't care who lives here.

This is for anybody who lives here.

If you are an occupant on this planet, you're going to have trouble.

It comes with a thing called life.

But when James talks about trials biblically, spiritually, he's talking about it

from a heavens perspective as we live through the frustration of earth realities.

A trial biblically is an adverse or set of adverse circumstances that God causes or permits

in order to take us to the next level of spiritual development.

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